Clicker Training, What’s Up With That?

If you have spent any amount of time around peo­ple that train dogs, you have prob­a­bly heard the term “clicker train­ing” asso­ci­ated with cor­rec­tion or force free train­ing.  But, clicker train­ing sounds kind of funny, doesn’t it?   Why does, “clicker train­ing” sound funny?  In an arti­cle in the New Yorker pub­lished in 1936, H. L. Mencken, argues that “k words” are funny. “K, for some occult rea­son, has always appealed to the oafish ris­i­bles of the Amer­i­can plain peo­ple, and its pres­ence in the names of many … places has helped to make them joke towns … for exam­ple, Kanka­kee, Kala­ma­zoo, Hobo­ken, Hohokus, Yonkers, Squee­dunk, “Stink­town” and Brooklyn.”

In Neil Simon’s play The Sun­shine Boys, Willy Clark (played by Wal­ter Matthau), is lec­tur­ing his nephew, Ben about what words are funny, “[W]ords with a k in it are funny. Alka-Seltzer is funny. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. All with a k. Ls are not funny. Ms are not funny.”

So here we are iden­ti­fy­ing our­selves with a word that has two “k” sounds in it, “clicker-training.” It sort of sounds like a kid’s game.  “Let’s go out­side and play “clicker.”  The thing is, the clicker, used prop­erly, is one of the most pow­er­ful tools used by behav­ioral researchers and ani­mal train­ers.  Sci­en­tific research has shown that clicker train­ing is the most effec­tive method of train­ing any animal.

Maybe we should call the clicker some­thing dif­fer­ent.  What if we call it an “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker?”  Now, that doesn’t sound so funny, does it?  What does the “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” actu­ally do?  As explained by Kathy Sdao, a cer­ti­fied applied ani­mal behav­ior­ist who was hired by the U.S. Navy to train dol­phins for defense-related open-ocean tasks, the “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker:”

1.    Pin­points a behav­ioral instant; a moment of mus­cle move­ment,
2.    Informs the ani­mal that the move­ment met the trainer’s cur­rent cri­te­rion; that is, his behav­ior was “enough to earn a reinforcement.

That is pretty pre­cise, behav­ioral jar­gon.  An “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” trainer (a clicker trainer) clicks a behav­ior that he or she likes and then gives a reward.  It is that simple.

An exam­ple of “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” train­ing would be teach­ing a dog to sit.  How can we get a dog to sit with­out pulling his neck up with a leash and push­ing his butt down to the ground?  Remem­ber, we use only pos­i­tive rein­force­ment – no pulling the leash up while push­ing the butt down.  We also do not engage in any leash pop­ping.  So, what do we do?  A way to begin “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” train­ing is to “cap­ture” a behav­ior.  Let’s say we want to teach our dog to sit.  As an “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” trainer,” you  can just go into a room with the dog and sit there or stand there with our trusty “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” and wait for the dog to sit.  Dogs do sit down, even­tu­ally.   CLICK the moment the butt hits the floor and then give her a rein­force­ment (usu­ally a tasty treat).  You don’t say any­thing and, not star­ing at your dog, just wait for another sit.  Your dog sits and BAMM, you CLICK and TREAT.  If you do that a lit­tle while, most dogs fig­ure out that they can train you to give them a treat if they just put their butts on the floor.  Your dog will sit there munch­ing on his treat,wondering why he didn’t think of that before.  One of the mirac­u­lous things about this type of train­ing is that once the dog becomes “clicker savvy,” she will begin offer­ing behav­iors to “fool” you into giv­ing her treats.

It is rec­om­mended that at the out­set of your train­ing jour­ney with your dog that you get some help from a qual­i­fied “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” trainer (okay, we’ll just call it clicker train­ing for now on).  As an exam­ple, that would be me, of course.  At first, the most impor­tant clicker train­ing learner is you.  While it does not take a great deal of time to learn how to use a clicker, it has to be learned.  The clicker is not a toy or a gim­mick.  It is a pre­cise tool that must be used prop­erly.  You will be learn­ing the most effec­tive way to train any type of animal.

As you may imag­ine, a num­ber of train­ers say that they are clicker train­ers and use force free meth­ods.  The fact is, just because you walk around the room with a clicker in one hand and a leash in the other does not make you a clicker trainer.  No more than hav­ing a license to drive a car makes you a race­car dri­ver or hav­ing flipped burg­ers in a fast food restau­rant makes you a chef.  (And I have flipped a few burg­ers in my day.)  Karen Pryor Acad­emy grad­u­ates (of which, I am one, www.karenpryoracademy.com) have com­pleted an inten­sive, six month train­ing pro­gram refin­ing their skills as totally force free, pos­i­tive rein­force­ment, clicker train­ers.  We are Karen Pryor Acad­emy Cer­ti­fied Train­ing Part­ners and can lose our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion if we stray from the tenets of the Acad­emy.  This is the only pro­gram to my knowl­edge that rigidly adheres to these types of stan­dards.  The Karen Pryor Acad­emy will not grad­u­ate a stu­dent or will with­draw the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of any grad­u­ate if the stan­dards are not met.

One last point (at least for this post) about force free, pos­i­tive rein­force­ment, clicker train­ing.  If you have ever expe­ri­enced other dog train­ing pro­grams, you are aware of how stressed a dog can become just prior to and dur­ing the train­ing.  No crea­ture likes to be pun­ished and tra­di­tional train­ing is pun­ish­ment.  You will truly be amazed to be around a dog impa­tient and enthu­si­as­tic to begin a train­ing ses­sion.  Train­ing is work but wouldn’t you rather work for a car­rot than a stick?  It is awfully nice to be able to look for­ward to going to work.

Give gen­tle dog train­ing a chance.  It can’t hurt.
You will become closer to your dog as you have not imag­ined.  Your dog becomes your train­ing part­ner, not a servant.